


Google Me

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Nazi talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 21:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: For my cap-ironman bingo square: Google me if you don't believe it.Tony finds out something surprising about Steve Rogers





	Google Me

**Author's Note:**

> Tony, being Tony, says something that's inappropriate about gay people. And Nazis. He insults Steve. It's a terrible insult. He does not mean it in anyway.

In all honesty, Tony might have been teasing just to get a rise out of Steve, good old straight laced Captain America. But the words pouring out of his mouth failed to equate and Tony only narrowed his eyes. The disbelief, the astonishment stunned him into silence. Tony was never silent, never. Not even when he was sleeping or so he had been told by more than one lover along the way. 

All he managed as Steve stormed around the common workshop was a muffled, “What?” He thought he swallowed the words more than anything.

Steve stopped, glared at him, and then with hands on hips, said, “Go ahead google me, if you don’t believe me.”

Tony’s mouth gaped open and he stared at Captain America- the same Captain America that walked around with a flag on his chest signifying a country with Puritan origins. How did the two thoughts actually go together? He finally gathered his thoughts, took control of his facial expression, and scoffed at Steve. “You are not seriously telling me that you’re gay. Plus I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word google. Do you think gay means happy in this case?”

If fire could spew out of anyone’s eyes, then Tony would have witnessed it at that moment. The fury was catastrophic. “I know what gay means. I also know what ‘google me’ means. I might be nearly one hundred years old, but I’m not an idiot or dead for that matter. I am capable of learning new things.”

“So what you learned that being gay is the new fad and decided to try it on, because seriously, Cap, no one is going to believe that you’re gay. No one.” Tony threw down his tools. Why even bother to pretend he was going to work on Hawkeye’s new bow when this calamity came storming into his workshop. “I’m not even sure why we’re having this conversation. Don’t try to pretend your gay just to show you accept me. That you googled me and now know my life story. So forget it. As far as you being gay I can tell you that I would be more apt to believe that you’re a secret Hydra agent than gay.”

Wowza! The expression that crossed Steve’s face looked like a collision of disgust, rage, disapproval, and hurt. “If you think for a minute that there’s any universe that I would ever be a damned Nazi, then you don’t know me at all. That would only be in some perverse poorly written piece of trash. And anyhow to say that me being a Nazi is more realistic than me being gay is damned insulting on so many levels I’m not sure I can count that high.” 

Tony never got a chance to respond, because Steve turned on his heel and marched out of the workshop. He would have slammed the door but it was glass and that put a damper on his exit. He only threw a scowl over his shoulder and disappeared down the darkened hallway. After he’d left, Tony stood there staring at the door trying to parse what he’d just heard with what he knew. 

Steve had come into his workshop and stammered and stumbled over asking Tony out on a DATE. A DATE. Where the hell did that come from? Maybe he was dreaming, or sick, or whammied by aliens.

“JARVIS, my man, am I awake?”

“Yes, sir, you are indeed awake.”

He sat back on his stool and spun around. “Am I sick?”

“None of my scans seem to indicate that you are sick.”

“Picture of health then, huh?” He spun around two more times. 

“I did not say you were the picture of health,” JARVIS replied like the dick he was.

“And I am supposing I haven’t been whammied by aliens,” Tony finished and just like he hypothesized, the answer to that was no as well. “Then what, JARVIS, what just happened?”

“Captain Rogers came into the workshop, asked you out on a date, and you proceeded to insult him,” JARVIS said.

Well, that did sound like Tony in some ways. Truth was though that the request for a date came completely out of left field. How was Tony to know that Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America, was a gay guy? Nothing in the past or present ever hinted at this fact. Tony knew this, knew Steve like the back of his hand. He’d idolized, and then hated the guy as a kid. He knew every Captain America fact there was. Every. Single. One. There was literally no way that he was gay.

“Google me, he says,” Tony muttered. “Like he even knows what that means.” Tony stopped spinning and focused on the computer. With a push, the stool rolled over to the computer panel and he keyed in google. “Okay, I’ll take you up on that.” 

He typed in _Captain America gay?_

There was an inordinate amount of information on the subject. Apparently a whole group of people across the globe actually had opinions and discussions on Steve Rogers’ sexual orientation. Not only did they have opinions but they wrote long blog posts, and articles, and something called fanfiction. None of this actually verified that Steve was in fact gay. It only demonstrated that there was a whole host of people with too much on their hands, too much imagination in their hearts, and probably too much porn on their phones. 

He went deeper. Google might be what Steve said, but it wasn’t the way to get to the truth. He had to go to the hidden internet where things were said and proven and most of the world didn’t even know where and how to look at it. He had to go dark. And dark he went until he managed to glean information from old documents from the SSR. Why the hell they were on there and linked to Hydra he had no idea. 

“Let’s put a pin in that one and figure out what Hydra, the SSR, and SHIELD have to do with one another later. First things first,” Tony said and started to scan through the data. He didn’t have to go far – at all.

Erskine had some notes – not the important ones like what the hell he did to make Steve a super hunk of man flesh. But other notes, personal notes. According to the diaries of Erskine – there was evidence.

_The subject, Steven Grant Rogers, underwent a complete physical. During the physical he asked what Project Rebirth would do – what it would fix. After explaining that all physical ailments would be fixed and all physiological malformations would be repaired by the serum, Steven asked again. Would it fix everything? I did not completely understand his meaning so I took him aside and talked to him in private. He was visibly upset and shook under my care. It must have taken all of his courage to confess, and I am certainly glad he did. He asked if he would be rid of his want of men. I knew what he meant and I felt a sympathy toward him. A dear uncle of mine – still in Germany and I fear for him – had the same malady. I could only hypothesize that this malady might be fixed as it is a mental illness according to the experts. But I do not know. It is out of my area of expertise. How could it be a mental illness to love someone? To be different? I am Jewish and thus I am different. Does that make me wrong?_

Tony stared at the screen. He couldn’t blink, couldn’t formulate a decent thought. There Steve was, a little scrawny kid with not much going for him and on top of that having to deal with his own identity as a homosexual man in the 40s. 

“JARVIS?”

“Yes sir?”

“Wipe the internet of everything that has to do with Steve’s sexual orientation. That’s his and his alone to face and to reveal. Also, find anything that links Hydra and SSR and SHIELD. I want to know what’s going on there,” Tony said. He slumped and shook his head. “Probably the first time he ever found the courage to ask anyone out.”

“Captain Rogers has been doing reading on the subject. He stumbled across a great many forums and message boards that were unkind to him as Captain America and whether or not he might be homosexual, sir.”

“Did he engage in conversations on the _internet_?” Tony was aghast.

“No sir. He only read forums to discover the reaction of the American public to his preferences.”

Tony wanted to blast the AI for just telling him this now. In general though Tony’s rule had been that unless it was life threatening, JARVIS was not to reveal or disseminate anything an Avenger did on their own floor. Privacy meant the world to Tony. 

“I need to see him. Where is he?” Tony jumped off the stool.

“Currently he is swimming laps in the pool,” JARVIS said and then added, “He didn’t take it well, sir. What you said.”

“Yeah, I got that J, thanks.” Tony should have taken time to figure out exactly what he said, have JARVIS replay everything. But he couldn’t – he had to get to Steve and to smooth things over. He figured the idea of a date would be off the table now. Tony insulted Steve.

Fuck, he told Steve he would be a Nazi first, rather than gay. Tony left the relative safety of his workshop and took the elevator to the pool floor. It was a gorgeous floor with panoramic views of the cityscape surrounding the Tower. Peaceful and quiet except for the rhythmic slosh of water as Steve swam. Alone. Tony watched for a while, noting how his stroke never faltered, how he breathed to the left every four strokes. He wasn’t wearing goggles or a swim cap. Just trunks that Nat bought him with the stars and stripes. Not exactly Captain America but close enough. He swam and swam. 

As Tony sat down and took off his shoes and socks, and then rolled up his jeans, he considered the differences in Steve’s life now and then. Not in the war, but as a kid growing up in the 20s and 30s. How small he was, how vulnerable. How the heart grows larger than the person, the vessel. It must have been torture for Steve to realize, to know that he was different in yet another way. In his brain somehow deficient, wrong. Tony never had to worry about that. Hell he was born during the age of free love. Sure a lot of crap hit the fan in the 80s with the AIDS epidemic but slowly but surely he watched things change around him for the better. He grew up secure in his persona. He grew up rich without want; he grew up testing his sexuality and experimenting with love. 

What had Steve experienced? If anything?

Sitting there on the edge of the pool, Tony knew he had no right to be there. No right to interrupt Steve after what he’d said earlier. It was a throw away comment but it struck true. That’s what they did, tossed comments and insults at one another to keep one another at bay. It was easier to keep dancing around each other than to actually admit that they revolved around each other. If that made any sense at all. 

Submerged in his thoughts, he didn’t realize that Steve stopped and climbed out of the pool. Dripping wet with no towel anywhere in sight, he walked over to Tony as he wiped away the water and ran fingers through his hair to groom it.

“Tony.”

“I’m sorry. I suck and I’m sorry,” Tony said and didn’t move to stand up. 

Steve stared beyond Tony to the beauty of the city surrounding them. “That won’t do.”

It should enrage Tony, but instead he only stood up and said, “I get it, I screwed up. Royally.”

“You said that me being a Nazi was more acceptable than me being gay. The two are so far apart morally it’s sickening,” Steve snapped.

“Yeah, you’re right. They are. Nowadays,” Tony started and he didn’t want to make an excuse but maybe explain himself. “Nowadays, Nazis they’re the bad guys in the movies. They’re caricatures.”

“So I’m a bad guy, I’m a caricature?” Steve’s glare should be bottled. It would do wonders to get people to cower in fear and do what he said.

“No, you’re not,” Tony said and put his hands up. “No, it was a flippant remark. I just found it shocking? No, stunning. No. I was surprised to find out that you’re gay. That’s all.” 

“Don’t joke about Nazis. People use that term like it’s a throwaway. Use it to scare people, use it to shock and write edgy stuff in novels and comic books. But Nazis – well, there will always be Nazis. What they did, what they could do - It’s not funny,” Steve said and when he finished his statement he visibly deflated. His shoulders, those massive beautiful shoulders, sagged. “And being gay is not equivalent to being a Nazi or worse. It’s – there’s nothing at all wrong with wanting to love someone.”

“I agree. I agree. Sometimes I’m a complete imbecile. I apologize.” Tony’s heart wanted to rob him of any ability to speak. How could he even think what he said? 

“It’s not even funny,” Steve murmured and looked away.

Tony stepped forward, closing the space between them. “No, it’s not funny. I apologize.”

Steve raised his chin and then nodded, accepting the truth to Tony’s words. “Okay.”

“Now, about that date?”

Steve smiled, and his cheeks warmed to red. “Well, if I got it wrong. If you’re not, or you’re not interested. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Tony said and captured one of Steve’s flexing hands in his own. “I am, and I am very interested.”

“Yeah?” Steve’s eyes sparkled with the reflected water.

“Yeah.” Tony smiled. 

Maybe there would always be bad guys and always be secrets and always be mistakes. But there will always be hope. And love.

THE END


End file.
